When it comes to marketing, it would appear as though ethics and morals go straight out the window with the dregs of your coffee from this morning. Why do I say this? Because I’m constantly hit with lies, blatant lies or misleading facts on social media, main stream media, face-to-face and so much more. If you don’t know something or you’re trying to hide something – just say you don’t know or just don’t say anything at all.

When marketing a SAFARI DESTINATION, it helps if the company and/or agency is truthful. This is because it reflects everyone’s attitude towards marketing and it unbalances the market competition.

If you have a lodge in a GMA – DO NOT SAY IT IS IN A NATIONAL PARK.

Say it is opposite to whatever National Park. Why does this anger me?

To stay in a National Park, one has to pay fees to the Department of National Parks and Wildlife. You don’t pay these in a GMA.

As a lodge-owner, it’s less hassle and cheaper to set up shop in a GMA.

The rules are more relaxed in a GMA.

GMA’s are set aside for various types of natural resource utilisation, commercial fishing and hunting included. Your guests may become distressed when they hear of a lion hunt happening down the road because you neglected to tell them it was a possibility. Of course this could ruin your business, but then why not secure a spot in the National Park across the river and make your life simpler?

If you have got a form of title deed on your land in the GMA, it’s probably because the chief stole the land from their community and you knew about it but turned a blind eye because it’s business. Maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that, but you know it’s not possible so you know you did something wrong.

It’s a blatant lie.

Standing in a National Park looking at the GMA on the other side of the river

If you have a lodge in a National Park – DO NOT SAY YOUR GUESTS HAVE EXCLUSIVE ACCESS.

Say it’s in a remote area where the likelihood of running into other tourists is very low. Why does this anger me?

The only exclusivity you can get is a 5km radius buffer around your camp that excludes infrastructure of any kind from anyone but that camp/company.

National Parks are exactly that – NATIONAL – they are open to the public and the public should not be excluded from certain areas because some wealthy tourists (or lodge owners) don’t want to see other people.

Sure, there’s zoning within National Parks for what kinds of utilisation are allowed, i.e. permanent infrastructure, fly camps only, nothing but roads, but that’s not the same as offering exclusivity.

NGO’s really need to work on their honesty, in a very general sense of course as there are a few that are open and honest. Not just small conservation NGO’s, the big well known international ones are just as guilty! For example:

If you’re going to market a volunteer programme, try to keep it a professional thing you can have on a CV and not a holiday destination for people with a guilty conscience because if anyone can do it then it’s not exactly special from a work experience point of view (it also adds a patronising taste to it).

Saying your main interest is in a certain group of mammals and then refusing to enter into talks with another NGO doing similar work, but in areas where you don’t/can’t operate, isn’t great for professional morale or the mammals of interest.

Taking donations from well-meaning people overseas only to use it on gigantic staff salaries, benefits (e.g. all housing, international school fees and annual flights home) is not a wise use of funds when your programme could actually achieve something with just half of that amount.

On your social media posts: name the country in Africa as there are 53 and it might be confusing. Also, why would you even leave out the country in the first place?

Taking support from the hunting community only to deny any affiliation with it, or even to attack them afterwards, isn’t very nice.

Hash-tagging SaveTheBigFive on a post that is in an area where rhino were extirpated DECADES ago is very confusing and misleading.

If the project is in a hunting area and you work with hunters, etc. – do not deny it, admit it and shine a light on how hunters, hunting clients and operators do give a damn. It’ll also show you are objective and only interested in the project, not the petty politics.

I could go on for days about this – it really is unacceptable that lying is considered tolerable just to get the right response or a quick buck. It’s OK because it helps the conservation effort or you’re friends with the lodge owner or whatever. IT IS NEVER OK TO LIE.

And for fuck’s sake STOP SAYING THERE IS PRISTINE WILDERNESS IN ZAMBIA!! It’s ALL had some mode of human transformation and/or use and/or settlement and/or utilisation and it’s perfectly natural for the bush to change with time and respond to whatever pressures (human, climate, wildlife, etc.) it faces.

You may be familiar with the surge of “keyboard warriors” – badly informed, highly emotional, rabid “activists” who would claim they have superior morals and incorporate rationality and compassion into their arguments. They also tend to believe their opinions are a) correct to the highest degree, b) the most important opinions, and therefore c) we should all do what they deem to be correct.

Conservation should NOT be about what the foreign public thinks.

It SHOULD be about what the local public want carried out in a way that will work in that area with those people.

These “keyboard warriors” of social media and, to a certain extent, various publishing companies (e.g. Africa Geographic) make conservation incredibly difficult for the people on the ground. The “real warriors” if you like.

How?

By not immersing themselves in the available literature in order to fully understand a scenario before bearing arms. This sort of uneducated, ill-informed argument is what one would expect of a child – not an adult who has had access to good education and who very obviously has access to the internet, therefore a huge amount of solid, verified information. This leads to two extreme views of the current conservation situation: “unless there is a shoot-to-kill policy for poachers and encroachers we will lose the war” and “by saving one individual elephant we have made a huge contribution to the elephant population”. Just as outrageous as the other, these are dangerous opinions to hold and spread as they are UTTER BOLLOCKS.

These “keyboard warriors” are, for the most part, not from the conservation places they are so rabid about (e.g. Africa, Asia, South America), or have had very little real-life experience in the conservation sector (tourism is NOT conservation) or researching conservation/wildlife/natural world topics.

They tend to base their arguments on what is “morally right” instead of what is practical, ethical and what works in different parts of the world. Besides, Westerners have different morals and ethics when compared to the peoples of the third world (and quite frankly, this is good sometimes).

Anthropomorphising animals, even plants, is never a good thing outside of a children’s book or film. “Keyboard warriors” are particularly good at this. Any researcher knows you cannot get so attached to a study subject to project human qualities onto it. I guess the point here is none of the “keyboard warriors” seem to be as intellectually successful as researchers.

Very rarely do “keyboard warriors” see the BIG PICTURE of conservation, they focus more on individuals (e.g. Cecil the lion and his son Xanda, or Satao the giant elephant, etc.) which is rather detrimental when you’re trying to conserve a whole ecosystem for not just one lion but several prides of lion, for example. This is particularly true when considering how hunting is an important tool for habitat and species conservation with the increasing human population putting immense pressure on the natural world (this will be discussed in another article once I find the right words for it).

They often choose animal lives over human ones while claiming to be compassionate and morally upright; such as when it comes to human-wildlife conflict. Local communities cannot be expected to live peacefully with, and protect, wildlife if their lives and livelihoods are threatened by that wildlife. Conservation is a human construct in any case.

I’m sure there are other examples experienced by other people in conservation, these are just the ones I’ve dealt with.

The biggest problem the “keyboard warriors” create istheir influence over the donors, upon whose money most conservation organisations rely. People won’t give money to a cause they don’t believe in but that means instead of doing our jobs in the field protecting nature we’re constantly trying to sell our projects and our opinionsto the general public.

If the conservation community were allowed to do their jobs the way they deem best without worrying about the reaction of the donor communities and their supporters, they would be a lot more effective at conserving wilderness and wildlife.

I submitted an article to Africa Geographic earlier this year and received a fantastically positive response. The one problem, however, was that the content wasn’t positive enough about how conservation actually works so I was asked to edit it a bit – add some sunshine and glitter – and resubmit. I have yet to do so because, quite frankly, I disagree with focusing solely on the success stories or on the positive side of absolutely everything.

Here is an article on Biodiversity Science by the founder of Animus Conservation stating why he thinks we should focus on the success stories, raising some relevant points. I agree that, in an effort to highlight the importance of conservation and show it’s not a total waste of money as well as inspire the younger generation to be more environmentally conscious, it is very important to talk about and share stories of success.

But how do you learn not to do something if no one has made that mistake before?

That is why I think it is crucial to put equal emphasis on both the failures and successes in conservation. Not only do we learn from our own mistakes but sharing the word about what didn’t work will help let others in a similar situation know they’re not alone (which is quite nice when you think you’ve just gone and wasted a bunch of donor funding) as well as inform those about to embark on a similar project. Sharing of failures could also elicit advice from people/projects who have done something similar and have had success.

A big problem is that many conservation organisations are terrified of losing funding if they fail to implement what they said they would (because the donors are actually the ones in charge). This affects the PR and marketing of the conservation organisations who try to always share positive stories (unless something or someone dies, or if a terrible story will raise funding). The people furthest removed from actual conservation are the ones that are determining what information we share within our own community; not all conservationists know each other so media is an important information-gathering tool.

Why are we trying to portray a perfect picture when all conservationists know that things rarely go to plan or work first time? Why does the media get to decide what story is more important than another?

It is dynamic field and none of us can preempt what will be the best strategy except Trial and Error. What if we had access to sufficient Trial and Error stories so that we could reduce the amount of error we have to go through? Now that sounds like sensible conservation to me.

Here are some links for further, interesting reads around this subject:

Some conservation initiatives focus on one species – southern white rhino, snow leopard, platapus, Iberian lynx, polar bear, condors, gorilla – or specific areas – Great Barrier Reef, fynbos region, the Mara. This is usually justified as, when referring to a specific area, marketing conservation of a “special” area encompasses every living thing and natural process inside that area. When referring to a specific species, they are used as ‘poster’ animals to bring in funding and resources to further conservation of that species, which sometimes helps to conserve other living things that share their habitat.

The problem with this prejudice in conservation is that it a) drags down areas or species that don’t exhibit charismatic traits or have beautiful scenery, and b) makes it incredibly difficult if you’re trying to conserve a place that excludes ‘special’ habitat or a species that is less charismatic than most (e.g. rodents, insects, fish, grass).

Let’s digress a wee bit and talk about tsetse flies. Did you know a ridiculous amount of land in Africa has been set aside for wildlife because of the presence of tsetse flies and the livestock diseases they carry? The second largest national park in Africa – Kafue National Park in Zambia – is one such example. Many commercial hunting areas provide vital habitat for scores of wildlife species because of tsetse files as well. So really, they deserve a big fat gold medal for “most insignificant thing to get Africa to conserve stuff” but they don’t, because they’re not sexy. In fact, photographic tour operators prefer to kill them because a) some are under the impression that any tsetse flies reduce wildlife productivity and b) “the guests hate them, it’s not good for business”.

Back to “Big 5” donors – in order to eek a bit of funding for an “insignificant” species or threat, conservationists end up having a bunch of, or designing, “high profile” projects in the hope that some of the funding could maybe be used for something more important than what some person in a 22nd-floor office in New York thinks justifies a donation of $5 a year.

Which would you be more likely to fund?:

elephant population research in Kruger

fire management in the DRC

collaring carnivores in Tsavo

frog distribution expedition in Mozambique

an elephant orphanage

fish surveys of the Zambezi watershed rivers

Be aware that the first, third and fifth are those that will open you up to critique considering Kruger and Tsavo are well researched and baby animals never run out of money, whereas Mozambique, the Zambezi watershed and DRC are relatively less well documented.

Another digression – PLANTS! No one ever thinks the grass needs love or the orchids need protecting from chikanda harvesting (usually Disa genus geophytes). People seem to think plants will always take care of themselves regardless of what they’re subjected to (which is correct to a certain extent) and that animals need to be the centre of attention right now. My only response to the matter is: “yes, let’s do that, let’s focus solely on the animals and, if and when there isn’t any food left I guess human babies will just have to do.”